


if i'm all that

by raincheck (seungmin)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reality Show, Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun-centric, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Produce 101 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-17 07:53:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16970694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seungmin/pseuds/raincheck
Summary: “You don’t dance to music,” Jaehyun says, eyes heavy. He’s slumped against the wall in the way he knows he’ll regret when the episode airs and management calls to scold him, but for now it’s just him and Sicheng and the light and the quiet. He cups his hands to his mouth, blowing to try and warm them up. “The music dances to you.”Sicheng doesn’t respond, just keeps moving and moving and moving. Jaehyun thinks that this is something he already knows.(Or: Jaehyun unlearns how to be an idol.)





	if i'm all that

**Author's Note:**

> first venture into adultct! one milestone down, plenty more to go.  
> title from all that by carly rae jepsen

Jaehyun thinks he’s got a handle on idol life, despite not having debuted yet. 

Light filters into the room, curtains he hadn’t noticed last night parting easily to let the sun in. It skips past the CCTV camera perched on his bedpost to land on Mark’s collarbone, who squirms at the warmth one bed down from him. 

His gaze slides from Mark to the right, to the figure curled up in the top bunk across from his. Blonde hair pokes out jaggedly from beneath the blankets. He thinks of his broken skyline back home in Seoul.

Jaehyun had volunteered to take the top bunk on the first night and left the rest to draw lots, but their last roommate’s luggage had gotten delayed at customs and they met him later, when he crept into their dorm quietly at two in the morning and Jaehyun led him to the last available bed in the room.

Jaehyun slaps a hand on the radiator and lets out a shaky exhale, timing his breaths to the gurgles under his palm. 

_1, 2, 3, in._

_1, 2, 3, out._

Winwin shifts, sitting up slowly to greet the sun. He’s got a handle on idol life too, because his eyes blink once, sluggishly, before turning lamp-like to Jaehyun. The light strikes one eye golden, one eye black, and Jaehyun watches him blink once more before facing the radiator again.

_1, 2, 3, in._

_1, 2, 3, out._

 

 

No sane company passes on _Produce 101_ if they can help it. Jaehyun’s called in to see management faster than he can say _publicity stunt._ Mark and Taeyong sat hunched silently next to him in anticipation.

“It’s not a matter of whether you want to or not,” the representative said, frown gentle and apologetic. She must be new.

“We understand,” Taeyong nodded.

And that was that.

 

 

In an ideal world, Taeyong nabs first and is crowned the Nation’s Center, with Mark coming in second after giving Taeyong a run for his money—er, his rap. If he’s lucky, Jaehyun will ride with them to the top and coast by at third, the three of them standing on their platforms looking down at the crowd, a little pyramid against the world. 

In reality, things are a little different.

On their first day of evaluations, Taeyong and Mark tape shiny black A’s to their name tags next to the blocky Hangul that spells out their names. Jaehyun comes up to the table and stares at the letters lined in a row. He lets himself linger over the A, looks at the two longer legs keeping the smaller one up in the middle—a pyramid in its own right.

“Sorry,” he says to the lady manning the booth when she urges him to hurry, and takes a B as he goes.

 

 

Back when they’d first got the news, they held individual meetings for the three of them to determine their company-approved image. CEOnim’s orders.

“Hyung,” Mark had murmured quietly to him when Taeyong was inside, “why do you want to be an idol?”

“Because I like it,” he responded, tongue feeling like sandpaper. He breathed in, then let it go out. “Because I don’t know how to do anything else.”

Mark nodded to himself, eyes lost on a Red Velvet poster at the far end of the wall.

“You don’t need to worry about things like that though,” Jaehyun grinned, crooked, leaning back in his chair. He raked a hand through his hair. “You’re dedicated. I can tell.”

“Are you?” Mark cut a glance at him, sharp, and Jaehyun felt the ground yanked from under his feet. Sometimes he forgets that Mark’s only young by birth.

Taeyong walked out then, easy smile worn smooth at the edges. Jaehyun wished he could do something about it. Beside him, Mark’s eyes never left his face.

 

 

Their other roommate keeps to himself, leaving early before the sun can catch him and coming back when the sky is completely starless. Jaehyun sometimes cracks an eye open and glances a shadow flitting about, but never for long. He’d meant to keep an eye out during company evals—he wanted to get a name, at least—but completely forgot. Judging by the green sweater Jaehyun finds in their laundry sometimes, he must’ve ranked D. 

Jaehyun sits by the wall. His spine’s stiff and there’s nothing he wants to do more than slouch into the floor, but the cameras are rolling and he’s ranked A now and people will look at him. People are always looking at him.

But right now he feels a lull, so he closes his eyes briefly and lets his mind go blank before opening them again. There’s only one person looking at him, and that’s the guy who just came through the door. Jaehyun looks down at his nametag— _Winwin_ —and frowns, turns it over in his head.

“Thank you,” Winwin says, stilted as he sits down next to Jaehyun.

Jaehyun blinks, glances at the staff in the room. They’re on break now. Filming’s still happening—it never stops—but he’s not going to turn heads if he strikes up some conversation. “What for?”

The guy sitting on his other side leans over Jaehyun and sticks a hand out at Winwin, grinning. “D to A, huh? That’s impressive.”

And it clicks.

 

 

“I still think I could’ve been center,” Donghyuck huffs. He’s invaded their room again, shoving Mark over and sprawling himself on the bed, starfished as Mark hugs the wall desperately.

That’s a new development too—Mark bumps into the one person younger than him on the whole show while they’re waiting to vote for center.

Jaehyun had tuned them out in favor of watching Winwin, who’d been called to go before him. He didn’t speak, just moved, trailed his fingers in the air, legs fluid. He was off the music, missing the beat entirely. _Pick Me_ echoed uselessly through the room. Jaehyun could see the other trainees wince.

But Winwin kept moving, arms bending, spine curved, and Jaehyun traced the music with his eyes. 

Winwin bowed, left the stage to polite applause, and made eye contact with Jaehyun on his way back to his seat. Jaehyun felt his stomach drop. His own performance—an old choreo he’d repurposed slightly—paled in comparison. Maybe he should’ve picked up rapping when he had the chance.

“No you couldn’t,” Mark snaps, knee digging into Donghyuck’s side. Donghyuck’s more stubborn than he is though, and they both know it. “Taeyong hyung won fair and square.”

“But him being center is too predictable,” Donghyuck rolls his eyes, hand clamping down on Mark’s knee and pinching. Mark yelps in response. “Don’t you think, hyung?”

“Mhmm,” Jaehyun mutters, and glances at Winwin’s empty bed.

 

 

Jaehyun learns some things about Winwin. Winwin likes practicing. Practicing has a strict _5, 6, 7, 8,_ a beat, a tempo. The music will always hold him steady.

“You don’t dance to music though,” Jaehyun says, eyes heavy. He’s slumped against the wall in the way he knows he’ll regret when the episode airs and management calls to scold him, but for now it’s just him and Winwin and the light and the quiet. He cups his hands to his mouth, blowing to try and warm them up. “The music dances to you.”

Winwin doesn’t respond, just keeps moving and moving and moving. Jaehyun thinks that this is something he already knows.

 

 

“My real name is Yoonoh,” Jaehyun whispers when it gets dark enough that all he can see are Winwin’s eyes, cat-like as they blink serenely at him. Mark’s snoring drowns out any fear of oversharing. He curls his hands into his sheets and continues, heartbeat ringing in his ears. “I was born Jung Jaehyun, but I changed to Yoonoh because the company told me to.” He shrugs, even though Winwin can’t see it. “They changed their minds.”

Winwin makes a noise halfway between a yawn and a hum, shifting in the darkness to sit up. His shirt falls off his shoulder as he does so, skin flashing pale without light. 

Jaehyun turns to face the ceiling, cocooned tightly within his blankets to ward off the cold. “I don’t think Winwin’s your real name either.”

That gets a laugh. Jaehyun feels the corners of his mouth curve upwards. “Really. How could you tell?”

Jaehyun hums, offbeat, the way he’s learnt from watching Winwin dance.

“I’m Dong Sicheng,” Winwin—Sicheng—offers softly, voice catching in his throat. 

Jaehyun rolls the syllables around, lets them sit beneath his tongue, waits for them to melt. He tests them in the quiet air, in the top half of the room that’s theirs alone to share.

“My company doesn’t know my real name,” Sicheng whispers, and there’s no sadness in his voice, just a heavy kind of tiredness, cottoned and feverish. Jaehyun turns over to go to sleep, and realizes that this is the first time he’s seen Sicheng scared.

 

 

After filming their first run-through of _Pick Me_ for M! Countdown, Taeyong followed him to the bathroom—the one place they can be sure of no cameras. He glanced left and right, before locking the door and turning to Jaehyun. “Don’t you think Mark spends too much time with Donghyuck?” He’d whispered, letting the question fill the room. “I’m worried he’s getting distracted.”

Jaehyun had rested his hands on the sink, fingers tracing the tiling. He didn’t look at Taeyong. “There’s not a lot of people who get what it’s like.”

“I get it,” Taeyong mumbled, hands coming up to rub at his eyes. His fingers left his face stained, concealer smudged waywards. Panda eyes blink back at Jaehyun. “You get it. Why can’t he come to us?”

“Sometimes,” Jaehyun said, thinking of Sicheng and his dancing and his music and his light and the way he does exactly what Jaehyun needs him to despite selectively learning Korean phrases like _internal organs_ and _I don’t think you’re third place,_ “you need something else.”

 

 

It gets hard. It always gets hard.

Jaehyun doesn’t have a whole lot. His face isn’t bad and his voice is smooth and he picks up the choreo quickly enough to avoid criticism but he has nothing of his own, nothing like Taeyong’s charisma or Mark’s talent or Sicheng’s ability to take anything and make it his own. 

In an ideal world, he’d be third place, the last tier of the pyramid, held up by Taeyong and Mark on either side of him.

In reality, he can’t even make it there.

 

 

“I used to think that you were a robot,” Sicheng says one day, slots himself between Jaehyun and the wall and ignores the fact that they have a song to learn. The room they’re in is noisy, two teams sharing one practice room for one song. One winner. Jaehyun feels his foot go numb, little lightning shocks sparking up his leg.

“And that you came from a factory full of clones,” Sicheng grins, hair matted and curled near his neck. When he pushes himself off the wall, Jaehyun can see the sweat marks he leaves behind. “Now you’re not though,” Sicheng leans down to mess with the choreo video, rewinding it to the start. He turns back and flashes a quick smile, hitting play on the iPad. “Now you’re just Jaehyun.”

 

 

Jaehyun’s getting good at reading Sicheng. He’s hesitant sometimes, but not very often.

Case in point: Sicheng skips his lines, mouth opening only after his part is already done and the song has moved on without him. Sicheng’s blunder makes the rest of his team nervous. Jaehyun sits on the sidelines—he can tell. The song continues and they’re scrambling to hit notes, voices jagged as the teachers’ faces grow darker and darker. As expected, Sicheng and his team let some tears fall before regrouping. Jaehyun sees their performance video trend fourth on Naver.

Another instance: Sicheng hangs back behind Taeyong and Mark, who climb down from first and third place respectively to congratulate Jaehyun. Jaehyun smiles, hugs them back, before they leave to congratulate someone else. Sicheng stares up at him from ninth place, mouth opening to say something. He doesn’t get the chance—they need to re-film Taeyong’s speech. By the time they cut to commercial break, Jaehyun’s already forgotten.

And yet another: At the beginning of the show Jaehyun once found Sicheng standing alone in their bathroom. Apparently Yuta from across the hall had stolen his toothbrush three weeks ago, and Sicheng hadn’t bothered to ask for it back. “I don’t know how to say it,” Sicheng had explained, before reaching over to pick up Jaehyun’s toothbrush. “Is this okay with you?”

Along with being hesitant sometimes, Sicheng can be loud. He’s charming in the same way an overgrown child is—he tilts his chin upwards and his face is open and earnest, his eyes twinkle easily. Sometimes he’s hesitant, sometimes he says too much and his face slips into practiced caution, sometimes he lets his heart lead the way and then slams the door on it. Jaehyun tucks these moments away quietly, pocketing them like loose change. 

He cashes them in later, when he and Sicheng are placed onto different teams for the last evaluation. “Teach me how to dance,” Jaehyun says quietly, tapping Sicheng when his team is distracted by the camera. 

“You already know how,” Sicheng mutters, eyes catching Jaehyun’s and crinkling into a smile. “You’ve spent four years training. How do you not know how to dance?”

Jaehyun closes his eyes, holds it. When he looks back at Sicheng, the light has caught the crown of his hair and burnt it bronze. “I just don’t,” he says, the words falling out of his mouth like skipping stones.

Sicheng doesn’t look at him, keeps his eyes glued to the iPad thrown haphazardly on the ground. “You think too much.”

 

 

It’s hard to talk to anyone on Produce without ulterior motives— especially when there’s eleven slots and a hundred competitors against a wildly unpredictable panel of judges. No one goes to make friends.

Jaehyun usually limits himself to the Taeyong-Mark-Sicheng-and-maybe-Donghyuck-if-he’s-there pool throughout the show. Most conversations happen at night, because their time throughout the day is spent subdivided into different bubbles of polite, passive-aggressive leadership, but not always. Often times Taeyong and Mark knock out immediately, and usually Sicheng manages to stay awake for long enough to tell Jaehyun things like _I had a snaggletooth before I came to Korea_ , but sometimes it’s too much even for Sicheng and Jaehyun finds himself alone at night. 

Jaehyun thinks then, thinks and thinks and thinks. He thinks that maybe he lost vocal position evals to Taeil and Doyoung because his voice was nice but nothing special. He thinks that maybe his company-approved image of being a perfect all-rounder isn’t exciting enough for the viewers. He thinks that maybe he’s destined to always trail behind Taeyong and Mark.

In an ideal world, the light shines and Sicheng looks back at him.

In reality, Sicheng’s in the light and Jaehyun never manages a glimpse.

 

 

Last year, Jaehyun had pulled out of training for a month after spraining his ankle.

“If you don’t give it all you’ve got,” the management representative said, tapping a pen against a stack of papers Jaehyun recognized as his trainee contract, “then you don’t deserve to be here.”

He sat against the mirror as Taeyong and Mark went over the choreo for their upcoming monthly evaluation again and again and again. They turned the music off for a water break, and Jaehyun asked, “do you think I belong here?”

Total silence. Taeyong and Mark had already left the room.

 

 

“Hey,” Sicheng says, nudging Jaehyun’s shoulder as he walks by. “Good luck.”

Four months down. Last performance to go.

Jaehyun goes up on stage and doesn’t look back. 

 

 

“Congrats!” Donghyuck beams, loud and unabashed. He smacks a kiss onto Jaehyun’s cheek and squeezes him—hard. “I can’t wait to debut with you.”

“Me too,” Jaehyun manages, hugging Donghyuck back. It’s nowhere near enough, but it’s all he can think to say right now. He makes the final cut by a little over one hundred thousand votes and settles in comfortably at seventh place. In the end the pyramid goes Taeyong-Mark-Donghyuck. It’ll take time, but he thinks this change isn’t unwelcome.

Donghyuck detaches from Jaehyun and launches himself at Mark, who flusters but manages to catch him nonetheless. Sicheng steps up to take Donghyuck’s spot, grinning at Jaehyun full-force, eye crinkle and all. “You nonbeliever,” he shouts, hands cupped around his mouth. “look at us now!”

“We’re on borrowed time,” Jaehyun rolls his eyes. They’ve only got a little more than a year together. But Sicheng’s laughing, a bright, bell-like sound, and on the screen Jaehyun can see the light shining on all of them, all eleven of them, and maybe, he thinks, maybe he can learn to be okay with this.

 

 

_(At attention. Top 11 trainees of Produce 101, let’s greet the National Producers. Everyone, you’ve worked hard!)_

**Author's Note:**

> SHOW ME IF [YOU](https://nctmfal.tumblr.com/post/179214568949) WANT [ME](https://nctmfal.tumblr.com/post/177631259108/nctinfo-notstalgia-do-not-edit) IF I'M ALL THAT  
> find me elsewhere: [cc](https://curiouscat.me/elsewhere) \+ [twt](https://twitter.com/mythsick) \+ [listo](http://listography.com/spearmint)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [all that and more](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17506238) by [friday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/friday/pseuds/friday)




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